Molly Nicholas
Staff Researcher at Figma
Berkeley, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMolly Nicholas is a staff researcher at Figma with 11 years of experience blending engineering rigor and human-centered research to shape creativity support tools. With a PhD in HCI from UC Berkeley and prior internships at Microsoft and Snap that produced peer-reviewed publications, she bridges applied research, product design, and cross-device interaction. Her background in electrical engineering, robotics, and cognitive science gives her a rare fluency in both low-level systems and user-facing experiences. Having started as an engineer and even worked as a professional clown-turned-researcher, she brings playful experimentation to methodical mixed-methods studies and prototyping in Unity and C++. Based in Berkeley, she’s known for translating quirky, hands-on curiosity into research that informs product decisions at scale.
11 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Human Computer Interaction, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Human Computer Interaction at University of California, BerkeleyComputer Science, Dance, Computer Science, Dance at Knox CollegeClown Conservatory, San Francisco Circus Center
Czech
Github Skills (83)
image9
drag-and-drop9
robot9
snapdragon9
image-processing8
resize8
grid8
pdf8
resizable8
markdown7
javascript7
python7
html7
abstraction-layer7
jekyll7
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
molecule/Qbadge
Oct 2015 - Sep 2016
Contributions:82 commits, 47 pushes, 3 branches in 11 months
molecule/molecule.github.io
Mar 2017 - Oct 2025
The open-source code for my website. Major thanks to Jeremy Warner for sharing the initial code base!
Contributions:2 PRs, 519 pushes, 6 branches in 8 years 8 months
initialbase-codesharingjeremy
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